trusting God

This is from a sermon I preached at Freshwind this year.



I would like to preach about trust today. I’m preaching about trust because it’s an area of growth for me not because I have become an expert. You want expertise? Let me preach about making mistakes!

Let me start of with my usual inflammatory declaration. Without trust you will never see God as he truly is. Or how about this, either you are trusting God or you are trusting you. Remember those 4 Spiritual Law tracts we used to pass around in the 70’s? In the middle, I remember there was a diagram with a throne. The point was that if you were saved, God was on the throne of your life.
I believe that trusting God allows you to truly have a relationship with him. All of God’s friends, from Abraham to you are called to trust him. Why? Because we start life entrenched on the throne of our own lives. We want things our way. We are loathe to trust, especially if we have been hurt by authority figures. We feel safe running our own lives!
And then God pulls aside the veil in front of our eyes and we are struck with a God who loves us and we begin to love him too. And then he pulls the rug out from under our feet. He asks Noah to build an ark, he asks Abraham to leave everything, he tosses Joseph into a well and then a prison, Moses gets to tend sheep for 40 years. (Forty years! Bill Pegg was barely in his teens!) How is he asking you to trust?
Why does God do such things? Doesn’t he realize that we are fearful people who would rather have some sort of illusion of control? Why, yes he does! God calls us to trust him so that we will find out that he is trustworthy! God wants us to know him as a true Shepherd. Don’t you love Psalm 23, the only Psalm that every Westerner knows. Hey, just shut your eyes and listen to these words penetrate your heart:
1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, [a] I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
Wow. Wouldn’t it be great the next time you felt stressed out and afraid to be able to look up and see him smiling down at you. To see that he is holding a rod and a staff to protect you. To look up ahead on the road and see that there are green pastures and still waters on the way. To look at all of your enemies and see a table groaning with a feast just for you?
Without trust, we miss who God wants to be for us. It’s not simply to build character its to give us eyes to see him.
You have heard it said, “Without Faith it is impossible to please God”. But, I say unto you, without trust you will never see how God is pleased with you. I hope that’s not heresy.
I feel like God wants to say to us: Let go of control. Don’t be ruled by fear anymore. Let me show you how capable I am of taking good care of you.
Our enemy is fear, but our friend is kindness itself. Do you feel like Jesus is saying “Oh your faith isn’t good enough!” That isn’t Jesus voice, it might well be a religious spirit. Remember this story. Guy comes up to Jesus and asks him to heal his poor epileptic kid, if he can. Jesus is a little offended, I think. He says, “IF I can, all things are possible to him who believes.” Guy cries out “Well I do believe, sort of, help me unbelief.” And you know what? Jesus overlooks the big chunk of unbelief and accepts his pebble of belief.
Which brings me to point 2 or 3 for those of you with a scorecard. Trust is a growing thing in God. Do you have faith that moves mountains on the first confession of faith. I didn’t. I could barely get out of my pew. Actually, the first alter call I ever heard, I couldn’t even get out of my pew even though everything in me wanted to! It took a youth leader coming back into the church and finding me to get me into the Kingdom.
I think one of the reasons that we struggle with feeling inferior is that we read about the great heroes and heroines of faith and then find ourselves wanting. You look at Anne Lawless or Barb Bambrick and ask why your level of trust is so low. May I remind you that both of these ladies have grown in trust God for at least several weeks? Or several decades! Ask them how great their level of trust was when they were baby Christians!
Trusting God means letting go of fear. Have you ever seen the trust exercise? In Drama, we used to encourage kids to fall back into the arms of their fellow students. Boy did that push buttons! But the wonderful thing is that kids were amazed to find that they could trust each other. You can’t be on stage unless you trust those you are on stage with. How much more God?
Here’s a chunk of my story. I wanted to work full time as a tutor this November. I did not want to work outside during winter. I had to make a choice to give up my safe (but chilly) outside job and trust that God would give me the hours that I needed. Guess what? He met my every need, but I wouldn’t have discovered his faithfulness if I was holding on to the security that I had.